This is the first (of a series) of literature reviews dedicated to a particular topic of Emergency Medicine clinical life.

We tried to give a deep look to all the articles that had a relevance for a particular argument in this year, and made some considerations regarding the emerged evidences . All the articles are full text end ready to be downloaded.

The first edition is focused on the “king argument” for an emergency medicine and critical care professional:

Cardiac Arrest

Chest compressions

This year the importance of chest compressions in CA was confirmed and even emphasized as one of the few (along with defibrillation) really wothy intervention to perform during CPR.

Mechanical Devices

The “black year” for mechanical devices saw 3 major trials finding no difference in outcome between mechanical and (good quality) manual chest compressions. Still remains the subjective (personal) impression that mechanical devices are of some utility for the human resources management and transport during CPR.

Vasoactive (and other) drugs

Like (and perhaps more) than for mechanical devices, 2014 signed a really bad year for epinephrine.

Lack of evidence on his utility and emerging ones on detrimental effects, accompanied this “historical” drug through the year that preludes to new 2015 CA Guidelines. Will epinephrine still be there at the end of this 2015? Or new emerging trends on use of steroids and vasopressin will prevale at the end?

ECLS

And after interventions that are loosing evidence in the years, new future prospectives for the management of CA patients, comes from Extra-Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation that gives renewed hopes of better survival and good neurological outcome, despite initial difficulties and skepticism.

Therapeutic Hypothermia

New era for the post-resuscitative care! Less oxygen, lower tidal volume and last, but not least, less cooling. And, while this year will give us some answers about intra-arrest cooling, now we know that 33°C is equally effective as 36°C and is no longer recommended in post ROSC patients! Maybe….